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Issue 7: Fall 2003

Miren Uriarte's article Holding to basics and investing for growth: Cuban education and the economic crisis of the 1990's, chronicles the commitment of the Cuban government to education since the early 60's and relates recent challenges that have led Cuba to open itself to world economy. [Editor]

Since the middle of the 1980's, processes of economic restructuring have led to large changes in the landscape of educational and social policy in most of Latin America. Faced with severe economic crisis, Latin American nations have sought structural transformations that have redefined the role of government in the provision of social benefits and sharply reduced expenditures through wholesale privatization and deep reductions in remaining government-sponsored programs. Between 1980 and 1990, expenditures in education as a percent of total government expenditures fell in most countries in Latin America , affecting especially public education, the only recourse for the poor. By 1996, the rate of expenditures improved somewhat, but countries such as Colombia, Guatemala, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Bolivia and Nicaragua had not caught up to the rate of expenditures of just a decade before. The results have been decreased opportunities for those that have to rely on government-funded education, serious gaps in quality and reach, poor teacher training and a continued de-funding of primary and secondary education in favor higher education, which is more politically popular and has a more visible, short-term economic impact …and, as a consequence, lessened possibilities for the reduction of poverty, for increased equity and for social and economic development.

Click here for full text: MirenUriarte.pdf